Overall, though, my iPhone OS requests from last June are a lot like the ones I still have. So (after the jump) here’s my original story, with “2010 thoughts” embedded where appropriate. After Thursday’s news, I’ll take a look at how closely Apple’s list of Necessary iPhone OS Improvements mirrored mine.

What would you like to see in iPhone OS 4.0 and beyond?

I’m not sure how operating-system version numbers translate into human years, but this I know: 3.0 is still well short of adulthood. Windows 3.0 was the first version that was recognizable as Windows at all; Mac OS 3.0 came along so long ago that I don’t remember anything about it.

So it’s no knock on version 3.0 of the iPhone software to say that even though it contains 100 new features–some of which are a big deal–there are plenty more it could benefit from. What follows is a highly personal list of stuff I think this OS needs–and as far as I know, none of it is in OS 3.0. If we see some of it in OS 3.1, and more in 4.0, and a sizable chunk by 5.0, I’ll be a contented man.

I said the list is personal, but I tried to be realistic. It contains nothing that I can’t see Apple enabling, or which would require new hardware. I also didn’t include multitasking or Flash support on this list. They’ve been covered to death, and my gut tells me neither is coming to the iPhone soon. Consider them features #26 and #27 if you like, though–and I do suggest some things that might lessen the need for them.

Ready to celebrate the release of OS 3.0 (which is due later today) by being dissatisfied, nitpicky, and generally unreasonable? Here we go.

iPhone OS still needs…

1. Home screen folders. The iPhone desktop is made up of a super-wide, horizontally-scrolling workspace, so it’s possible to sort different sorts of apps into their own screens. But moving them around is a hassle, and you can’t jump directly from any screen to any other one. I want something that the old Palm OS had eons ago: The ability to easily organize apps into folders. [2010 thought: The iPad really needs this.]

2. A Home screen that flips into landscape mode. Most of OS 3.0’s apps now let you work with the nice, wide keyboard enabled by rotating the phone 90 degrees. I’d like to be able to use the phone almost continuously in landscape format if I felt like it–which I guess means that the settings screens and App Store should flip as well as the desktop. [2010 thought: the iPad already has this]

3. A roomier dock. Quick access to four apps isn’t enough. If the OS let you optionally turn on a second row of icons (or even a third or fourth one) we could get to more of our most-used programs without having to slip-slide our way around the Home screen.

4. Help for third-party apps that want to support landscape mode. I’m not an expert on what Apple’s SDK does to assist programmers create apps that work in both portrait and landscape form, but I take the fact that relatively few do as a sign that it’s not a cakewalk. My old AT&T Tilt phone ran Windows Mobile, and just about every application that should have supported both orientations did. I’m assuming that Apple’s OS will need to go resolution-independent at some point to support new devices with different screens, so the time to make it easy is now. [2010 thought: I think the OS actually does assist with this, though I wish more developers took advantage of it.]

5. A more programmable Home button. In iPhone 3.0, double-clicking it can reportedly launch Search, your phone’s Favorites, the camera application, or the iPod features. Shouldn’t it be able to launch any app on the phone–Apple or third party? [2010 thought: Supposedly, the rumored new multitasking feature in iPhone OS 4.0 lets you tap the Home button repeatedly to cycle through apps.]

6. The ability to delay Slide to Unlock. Whenever the iPhone is shut off–either because you turned it off yourself or it timed out–you must Slide to Unlock to get back to the Home screen. That makes it hard to pocket dial the phone, but it’s annoying if the phone just turned itself off right before you wanted to do something. I’d like to see the ability to delay the autolocking by a user-specified amount of time. And hey, why not let us disable it altogether if we feel like it?

7. Access to attachments by third-party applications. No iPhone office suite will be truly satisfying until it’s possible for it to open, edit, and save attachments directly from the Mail app. The OS still sandboxes all data so apps can only touch their own files, but Apple can and should make an exception in this case. [2010 thought: It does for photos, but I’d like to see it open up a lot more broadly. The iPad has a similar, useful feature: third-party apps can sync files via iTunes.]

8. A better Notes application. iPhone 3.0 gives Notes the ability to sync with Macs and Windows PCs. It still features a lined-paper-and-marker interface that embarrasses me slightly every time I use it, though–at the very least, you should be able to switch to something more mundane and professional. I’d also like to see the ability to attach photos to a note. Maybe Apple thinks the existence of powerful third-party note-takers like Evernote eliminates the need for it to beef up Notes, but I’d still like to see something more substantial. [2010 thought: The iPad has the same wacky Notes app.]

9. A to-do list. It startles me that Apple has done ambitious, enterprisey things like make the iPhone work with Microsoft’s Exchange server, but that the phone still doesn’t ship with a task manager. I use and like Remember the Milk, but still find it odd that OS X’s iCal has a to-do list that doesn’t talk to the iPhone at all.

10. Human Interface Device support. The OS now lets third-party applications talk to peripherals through the dock connector–such as Johnson & Johnson’s glucose meter–but as far as I know, there’s still no way to create the one iPhone add-on I most want to buy. Which is a folding keyboard along the lines of the lovable and useful Stowaway. If Apple baked support for the Human Interface Device (HID) standard into the OS, you’d be able to use a physical keyboard anywhere where the on-screen one was available. [2010 thought: The iPad supports keyboards, so I assume/hope there’s an excellent chance that the iPhone will, too.]

11. A useful Slide to Unlock screen. You can choose an image to show up when you turn on your phone but haven’t slide to unlock yet, and that’s very pleasant. But how about providing the option of putting information there that might help us avoid having to unlock the phone at all? It would be a nifty place to put appointment details, headers for recently-received e-mails, and the like. Bonus points if there’s an API that lets third-party apps funnel information to the display, too. [2010 thought: The iPad has feature sort of along these lines–you can peek at whatever app is open without unlocking the device.]

12. Background music for third-party apps. Once you’ve used the Palm Pre version of Pandora and streamed music in the background while doing something else useful or entertaining in the foreground, it’s hard to go back to the iPhone–where every music app except for Apple’s own iPod stops playing the moment you launch a different application. If Apple doesn’t want to offer full-blown multitasking, how about providing hooks that let any audio app–Pandora, Last.FM, Slacker, AOL Radio–keep playing music in the background even after you close them? Seems pretty simple to me, and it wouldn’t cause stability problems. [2010 thought: Of course, full-blown multitasking–which is rumored to be in OS 4.0–would be better still.]

13. The ability to subscribe to podcasts and sync them directly on the phone. As far as I can figure, you can snag individual episodes of podcasts you originally subscribed to via iTunes on a Mac or PC. But you can’t subscribe to them so they arrive on your phone whether or not you’ve synced with a computer. I’m in favor of the notion of iPhones being as autonomous as possible, and this would be a significant step in that direction. [2010 thought: This is available through third-party apps.]

9 Comments For This Post

You’ve covered a lot of what I would like to see. A lot of these things are doable if you wish to jailbreak the phone so at least we know that most are possible and work very well on the current hardware.

The most important to me would be folders to organize your apps by category. Some multitasking. I wouldn’t want to run a bunch of apps in the background, but the ability to run one or two additional apps in the background would be very useful.

I’d really like to see support for multiple Exchange accounts. I use an Exchange server at work and one for my personal e-mail as well and would like to have them both sync and push on the iphone, while maintaining the separate calendar and contacts. A unified inbox for all e-mail accounts or a quicker and easier way to move between different e-mail accounts.

Nice list – I don’t want home screen folders, I want live widgets, like Android and Windows Mobile. I really hope Apple includes a better home screen and notification system. The ability to add multiple exchange accounts would be nice too. What about the option to turn off automatic email polling and push overnight..? Nokia does this nicely (you can also turn off work email polling at weekends for example)

Also the ability to search bookmarks/web history from Spotlight would be nice.
Multitasking would be nice, but it’s only needed because developers don’t save the state upon exit as they should (Windows Mobile 7 freezes processes and resumes them, a great idea btw). Maybe a compromise like task scheduleing for developers, so To-Do List type apps can pop-up reminders without keeping a push connection open constantly.

I agree with Iria. As I was going through the list and was thinking, “Jailbreak…jailbreak, Apple fixed it, etc.” I like your video apps hooking into Safari idea though.

Also, the half-way to listen to podcasts exclusively on the device is to go into the iTunes app and searching for the podcast you subscribe to. There’s a list, tap the episode you want to listen to, it begins streaming. It would be nice to download podcasts though, through the iPod app preferably.

Please, no. There is an ISO standard video codec that is universally supported in all of the world’s video players (even FlashPlayer) and there is a W3C standard way to put video in a Web page. No proprietary software is required, no hacks are required. If there is some video that you can’t see on your iPhone, that is entirely the publisher’s fault.

> so I’d like to have the opportunity to put the phone
> in 2G mode for voice while leaving it in 3G mode for data.

I’m pretty sure that the phone can have either a 2G or 3G connection to the tower, but not both at once.

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